Stand By Me

While some people were enjoying new discoveries and experiences, on the other side of the outlet, one particular person in a particular game was not at all pleased with what she'd discovered that morning.

No one had ever slipped past her and infiltrated the tower without permission.

No one had ever caused her this much of a headache and gotten away with it.

A tall, blonde lady with a sharp tone and a hard gaze surveyed the top of the tower after she'd just watched one of their escape pods make its way out of her game.

The eggs kept stable beneath the glass layer were all hatched. Not only was it a hassle trying to contaminate them after they'd left this holding cell, but it was possible the team didn't capture and eliminate every single one of them.

In fact, she was fairly certain there was at least one missing.

"Sarge," One of the soldiers said as they walked in through the doors. "I think you might want to take a look at this."

The rest of the soldiers had been investigating every inch of the perimeter, trying to find a trace of who was responsible. How the culprits managed to get through the gates without being noticed was unknown. But she would have been lying if she said she wasn't impressed.

This has never happened.

But they had only been plugged in for a week. This digital life was full of surprises.

She followed one of her soldiers into the security room where an entire wall of screens was shown before her. Cameras were planted in each area, including the front entrance. Sometimes the cy-bugs caused enough damage to knock them out.

That explained why they couldn't find the intruders on the front entrance cameras.

"What is it?" The sergeant asked, clearly irritated. This was the last thing she wanted to be doing on her weekend.

The security officer in charge of watching over the area pointed to the camera that was attached to the hatching room. She could see what the man was referring to when he said he found something interesting.

It was a man who looked much too tall and large to be a human and a tiny creature that she didn't realize was another man until she looked up close. There was no audio on the camera and it was difficult to tell what they'd been saying to each other just by observation alone.

"What in the-?" She began. First off, the little man jumped out of the bigger man's overalls. That was another thing she didn't see every day. Then they talked with one another and she watched the giant walk up the steps towards the prize. "Sneaky no-good trespassers."

Clearly, they came here for the medal. Which wouldn't have been a problem if they were apart of this game, and helping the players get to it. Aside from stealing a piece of property that didn't belong to them, they also caused a massive outbreak. And now there was a possibility that another game could be infected.

Then the playback ended with the two hugging it out.

"I've seen enough." The sergeant said and turned her attention to one of her men. "Hand me my cruiser. I'm going after them."

"You sure that's a good idea?" The soldier questioned. "Whatever game's infected, it's probably a lost cause now."

The sergeant loaded her weapons.

"It's not the one, singular game that I'm concerned about, Kohut." She responded. "Those things will chew up every single game until this entire arcade is a wasteland. We don't want to be responsible for that, do we?"

"No, ma'am."

Once she was satisfied with her supplies, she left the security room and wandered down to the elevator.

"T.J.?" One of the others said.

The sergeant stopped to listen.

"Good luck."

"Don't need luck where I'm going."

As predicted, Vanellope grew tired of carrying the heavy engine with her little arms. Ralph begrudgingly helped her with it and took several steps ahead of them. The faster he walked, he told them, the closer they could get to being back at Vanellope's home.

Vanellope was skipping and happily humming to the tune of the game's theme song. Felix was lagging behind, feeling sore in the places those birds pecked. In such a short amount of time, he'd been scratched and poked and physically harassed by so many rabid creatures. It didn't feel possible to experience so much in the span of one day.

And speaking of experiencing things.

He was staring at the back of Ralph's head with a grin plastered on his face. Only an hour ago, his lips were so close to touching Ralph's. All he'd been doing since they'd been walking was reminiscing. The warmth of Ralph's breath on his face. His heart pounding so loudly in his chest that he was absolutely sure the big man could hear it, too.

No one had ever given him such an exquisite rush.

He had been existing for thirty years. And not once has anybody he'd ever encountered made him feel half the things Ralph did.

He was smiling giddily as he caught Ralph turning back to look at him.

Vanellope nudged Felix's arm. "So, I guess I was right about you guys being on a date that time?"

"W-Well..." This was not the conversation he wanted to have right now with Ralph being so close. "Not exactly."

"Oh, come on, Hammerhead." Vanellope whispered too loudly to not have been heard. "Every time I turn my head, I see you two looking like you're about to make out. Even if you're not together yet, you really want to be."

Felix was quiet, thinking over her words. Was it that obvious that Felix fancied the wrecker? The thing was, it was easy to do something hasty like almost kiss the person he loved. But much less so when thinking about whether he wanted to move forward from there.

Even he had his own insecurities with it. But he wouldn't deny it. He loved Ralph. He always had.

He just didn't know how to say it.

"I can see it in your eyes." Vanellope said in an attempt to sound mysterious like a fortune-teller. "You love him."

"I don't think this is an appropriate talk to have with a child." Felix whispered to her in a raspy voice. She was making him honey-glow. Only Ralph was allowed to do that.

"Please, I'm very mature for my age." Vanellope said as she hocked up a good amount of spit in her mouth and launched it towards the other side of their path.

It wasn't that Felix didn't want to confess his feelings. Felix wanted so very badly to wrap Ralph in his arms and tell him over and over again how he felt about him in between urgent kisses.

He wanted to give Ralph a roof over his head. A real roof, not one made out of the leftover remnants of the destroyed apartment. To present him a freshly baked pie and a loving embrace whenever the working day was done.

But he couldn't do that without thinking about the thirty years of neglect. Or about how complicated their working relationship would be as a hero and villain. Not that they couldn't have been professional when they needed to be. Even friendships could have been messy in a workspace.

There were so many "what-ifs" surrounding this simple question. Felix deserved to be happy and so did Ralph. Did everything else really matter?

"Wait a minute." Vanellope said. She heard something off in the distance. It sounded like a lot of buzzing car motors. "Uh oh. We gotta hide."

"Why?" Ralph said, readying his fists. "There's nothing ol' Ralph can't handle."

"Yeah, but y-you g-guys don't wanna be here when t-they come." She was glitching again. A little uncontrollably because in one second she was in front of Ralph and in the next she was behind him.

"Who?" Felix asked.

Vanellope looked at the path ahead, where she could see several karts coming their way.

"Hide in the corn!"

They did as she asked and leapt into the candy corn stalks. The roaring motors rushed by and ten other small children arrived, each one in a different styled go-kart. One of them hopped out of a pink hard candy vehicle, with bleach-blonde hair, a pink berry cap, and a small lollipop in hand. Her face had a scowl of disgust as she surveyed the area.

"I sense the glitch was just here." She said.

Another one, a boy with a peanut butter cup hat jumped out of a kart that was decorated the same way. His hair was blonde and his face was rosy, making the appearance of a harmless boy. But he held the same expression the girl did.

"That means she already grabbed the engine."

A girl in green pigtails and a candle atop of her hat appeared by their side.

"So now what, Taffyta? Do we go report to King Candy?"

Taffyta shook her head.

"We don't want him to know that we failed to catch her before then."

"Then what do we do?" The boy with the peanut butter cap said.

The pink girl looked thoughtful.

"If I were a glitch, where would I be hiding?"

Vanellope had been covering her mouth with her hands and shaking. Her glitch was malfunctioning and she was trying her best to contain herself.

"Kid?" Ralph whispered. "You okay...?"

"I'm fine, I'm..."

But she teleported away from behind them to the corn stalks right behind them. Then she appeared in the area right across from them. It was just as Vanellope said. More of a problem than an advantage.

Her body was floating above the stalks and the unmarked path where the racers were looking. Then she fell straight down on her rear in the middle of the circle. She groaned in pain and looked around her.

Why couldn't she have just went straight through the ground, instead?

"Hello, fellow racers." She said, nervously. "Don't mind me, I was just having a little stroll."

Taffyta approached with a terrible smirk on her face. "Well, well, well. That took even less effort than the first time."

The girl with the candle on her head took Vanellope by her left arm and the boy with the peanut butter cup hat took her by the right. She was held against the pink hard candy kart.

"Hey, that hurts!" She struggled out of their grip.

"Alright, freak, where's the engine at? I thought we made it clear that you are forbidden to race." Taffyta said.

Vanellope spit in her face.

"I earned that fair and square! Why can't I just have a real racing kart like you guys?"

Taffyta wiped off her face, clearly furious. Vanellope felt the pink racer's fist hit her straight in the stomach.

"Ow!"

She would have dropped to her knees if they weren't holding onto her arms so tightly. Both Ralph and Felix winced.

"Listen, we don't have to do any of this so long as you hand over that engine. Then you can return to whatever hole you call home. We can forget this little encounter ever happened."

Vanellope looked up at her with weary eyes. "You want it? Go out and find where I've hidden it. It's not that hard." She gave the pink racer a half-smile. "Even you can figure out where it is."

The boy holding her right hand twisted her arm.

"This is not a joke, Vanellope." He told her. "Do we need to remind you that you're on thin ice?"

"King Candy said he saw two trespassers entering our kingdom earlier this morning. Just at the same time you cheated your way into the race." Taffyta continued, getting right in Vanellope's face. "You wouldn't happen to know where those two could be lurking, would you?"

Vanellope didn't have to think about it.

"Nope. Not a clue."

Taffyta frowned.

"Wrong answer."

And punched her in the gut again. The two children holding her arms pulled them apart. Vanellope tried to glitch on her own terms but it wasn't working. It was like they had a code to suppress it.

"Tell us where they are, and we won't have to bring you to King Candy."

Vanellope's eyes widened.

"What's he going to do to them if he gets them?"

"You know exactly what he'll do." Taffyta said, standing up straight. "This little glitch knows where they're hiding. Maybe we can't drag it out of her, but we know someone who can."

The two children holding her gave her a hard shove and she was knocked onto the ground.

"Signal the others." Taffyta said. "We're bringing her in."

And two of the other children grabbed her limp arms and dragged her towards the awaiting karts while Vanellope struggled and protested, and tried to pull herself free. "No!"

"Hey!"

Each of them turned their heads. Ralph and Felix came out of the candy corn stalks and Ralph was staring down at them menacingly.

"Let her go, or it'll be you children begging for mercy." Ralph demanded.

The two racers that were holding Vanellope dropped her, standing back several feet with their hands up in defense.

"Who are you?" Taffyta asked, her lip quivering slightly.

Ralph popped his knuckles and stepped towards them.

"I'm the one whose about to give you a real punishment if you don't get on out of here!" He punched both of his fists against the ground and caused a tiny earthquake in front of him. The racers all screamed in terror and hopped in their karts. They all sped off into the distance faster than any regular vehicle.

Felix helped the little girl back on her feet.

"Are you alright?" He asked, softly.

Vanellope nodded, holding her hands to her sore stomach. "I've been through worse."

Ralph's eyes were still faced forward, watching a massive cloud of dust rise up from the dirt path where the racers fled.

"Vanellope." He said in a low tone.

The little girl looked up at him, surprised that he called her by name.

"Did they break your kart?" He asked.

She knew she couldn't have lied about it that time. No matter how much she hated to admit it.

"Yeah, they did." Her head hung in shame that she could have let something like that happen to her. She was stronger than that. That was what she liked to believe, anyways.

Felix knelt beside her as she sat back down in defeat. She was aching, angry, and humiliated. All she'd ever wanted was to be like them and they've demonstrated time and time again that she couldn't even think to become a racer.

"I've never heard of such heinous acts committed by children." Felix said.

"You've been living under a rock, then." Vanellope said, coolly, crossing her arms over her knees. "This is just one of the perks of being me."

Ralph's gaze softened and he wandered over to her. Sitting on his knees, he asked, "I don't get why they can't just let you race. What's the worst that can happen?"

Vanellope shrugged.

"They don't know because I've never actually done it. Maybe they think my glitching will bug up the game, or something. All I know is that those guys and King Candy have all decided that I'm a dangerous being and I can't be allowed anywhere important. I can't go to the kart bakery, I can't get the supplies to build one. It's thanks to you guys I've been able to get even close to getting a real kart."

"Well," Ralph picked up the engine and carried it on his shoulder. "Let's get out of here before they come back for round two."

The little girl's head perked up. "I need you guys to promise me something."

She stood up and looked at the both of them, realizing they were the only true friends she had in her own game.

"No matter what happens," She began. "Don't let them take me to King Candy." Her hands were folded together like in a prayer. "Please. You don't know what he can do to a little degenerate like me."

Felix stood up and gave her a nod without any further questions.

"We won't let that happen, Little Lady."

"You swear?"

She looked up at Ralph, who crossed his index finger over his heart.

"We swear."

AN: Doing more art stuff. Probably also going to share it to DeviantArt. It takes me so long to do one damn drawing. A whole entire day. But I'm really enjoying it. And I'm really enjoying writing this, too.

I'll post another chapter of my other fic, soon. I've been having trouble keeping my attention on one story because this one excites me.

Also, I used the deleted scenes stuff because I felt like if WIR was more about the dynamic between Ralph, Felix, and Vanellope, those scenes would have been included. I want a separate alternative universe about the three of them together.

Guess I'll have to write up that one as well!